Sun Crystals
by IFeltHope44
Summary: In the midst of searching around the old beach house on Ember Island, something catches Katara's eye and she won't be satisfied until she gets the answers she wants. Zutara fluff. Some Sukka thrown in for good measure.


**So...happy belated Easter, Zutarians! n_n **

**Spring has brought on a new wave of fresh ideas, and so here we are.**

**I own nothing! Zuko, Katara, Suki, Sokka, Toph, Aang, Ursa, Ozai, Azula, Master Piandao, Ember Island, and anything else recognizable belong to Mike and Bryan and Nickelodeon!**

* * *

"Hey, Suki, watch this!" Sokka crowed, hefting a gold-plated sword with both hands and chopping at the musty air with precision, the way Master Piandao had shown him. Suki turned from rummaging through a dusty old trunk, tossing silk scarves that were ridden with fire-moth bites across the lacquered wood floors.

"That's great, honey," she said almost offhandedly. Still, Sokka grinned with satisfaction.

"Wow, Sokka!" Toph exclaimed, turning in his general direction. "It looks like you could be a master!" Her unseeing eyes were open wide and her mouth set in an uncharacteristic smile.

The Water Tribe boy's face lit up. "Really? _Master Sokka_. That sounds-hey, wait." He crossed his arms as Toph snickered.

"Aw, why do you insist on doing that to him?" Suki asked teasingly. With sympathy, she kissed his cheek gently before returning to her search.

"Because, Fan-Girl, he falls for it every time and it just keeps getting funnier and funnier!" The earth bender doubled over laughing on the floor.

"Have fun starving," Zuko growled irritably as he threw open a crosshatched chest that smelled of smoke and old incense.

"C'mon, Sparky, lighten up," Toph chided once she regained her stony apathy again. "There's stuff growing on this island, isn't there?" She gestured vaguely in the direction of the sun-bleached, splintered door where lush forests awaited on the other side. Bright orange and fuchsia and blood red fruits drooped from flimsy tree branches and tiny black berries were abundant on low shrubs.

"Most of which will _kill _you. And it's dry season, so I wouldn't even bother looking. The most we could possibly get is fish, and the Avatar doesn't even eat fish."

"But you're the prince of the damn country. Why exactly are we scavenging for money? You should just go and take whatever you want. Or, of course, we could always summon the great Runaway to help us out." She grinned an uncannily demonic grin at her mention of her past alias.

"The _banished _prince, and a traitor wanted for treason. Yeah, I'll go waltz into the market and take whatever the hell I want. That's a _great _idea," he snarled. "And besides, we're not scavenging. I know my fa-Ozai kept a box of gold for emergencies. We just have to figure out where it is."

There was a short beat of silence before Sokka sneered like a child, "_Yeah_, Toph!" and threw the first thing his hand touched-a lumpy, soft blob-at the girl across the room.

"Ew, what is this thing?" Toph yelled, pinching the dusty, furry thing between two short fingers and suspending it in the air as far away from her as she could. Zuko glanced over, annoyed, and looked at what Toph held.

"It's Azula's rabbit," he said flatly, then quickly returned to his search, upturning frail boxes and pushing aside bolts of rotting silks.

"Azula had stuffed animals?" Aang asked, astonished. "Your _sister _played with a stuffed _bunny_?" He shook his head in shock, as if the Azula they were talking about lived in a different world.

"Before she could talk, yes," Zuko corrected. "And servants had to sew its head back on at least a dozen times."

An uncomfortable, still silence blanketed the six teenagers as they all momentarily thought of the poor lump of cotton. Even before she could talk, Azula was unusually cruel. The idea chilled them to the bone.

"That's one crazy sister you got stuck with, Sparky," Toph said eventually.

Sokka and Aang voiced their agreement and the mood seemed to lighten. Katara, who had kept quiet and dutifully hunted around in the Fire Lord's forgotten possessions, saw something in her peripheral vision that caught her attention. Hanging in the middle of a side window from a thin metal chain dangled a large, teardrop crystal that spiraled lazily in the light breeze that danced through the broken front doors.

"Hey, Zuko? What's that?"

It took an enormous amount of energy to keep from breathing fire, but he looked up once more and managed to growl "What?" through clenched teeth. They were _trying _to find _money _to buy _food_, and it seemed like everyone just wanted a tour of the house.

The water bender's eyebrows knitted in an annoyance that seemed to match his. "The pendant in front of the window." As she looked around, she saw that crystals hung among the heavy velvet drapes of all of the windows.

Zuko followed her pointing finger and his harsh gold eyes softened. "Those are Sun Crystals," he answered. Katara squinted at the tiny facets of the large jewel but found nothing particularly special about them, other than the fact that they were huge.

"Why are they called-"

"Found it!" Suki shouted, delighted, from one of the far corners of the room. In her lap rested an intricately carved box of cherry wood with little compartments here and there. The lid was flipped open and gold pieces flooded out of the interior. "Jackpot," she said, latching the box closed in a snap just as Sokka's hand reached out to snatch a fistful of precious coins.

Everyone's attention quickly diverted from Katara to Suki, and Zuko gave the warrior a shallow bow of appreciation as she handed over the family heirloom.

"Fine, just ignore me," Katara muttered, throwing her hands up in exasperation, and marched out of the musty old house after Toph.

...

The moon still loomed low in the sky as a fading sliver of white against the deep blue Fire Nation sky. After a meal bought fresh from the market and evening baths, everyone had quietly settled down into their respective sleeping arrangements, for the next day promised intense battle strategy and everyone wanted to be alert for the crucial plans.

However, Zuko was already up, despite dawn having not broken yet. He crept around quietly with his years of practiced stealth and tried to disturb the blind earth bender as little as possible.

He knelt by Katara, the one who took longest to forgive him for certain events in Ba Sing Se. He touched her shoulder and almost immediately had an ice spear wavering in front of his throat.

"Relax, it's just me," he whispered.

Katara, now awake after nearly being scared to death, flopped back onto her sleeping furs and let her crude spear fall from her tired hands. "_It's just me_," she mocked, her voice rising in pitch. "What do you want, Zuko, and why can't it wait until morning?" Her questions were grumbled into her pillow.

"Technically, it'll be morning in about five minutes-"

"I'm going back to bed-"

"But I thought you wanted to know why those crystals are called Sun Crystals."

"And this couldn't wait until I was done sleeping because?"

"It's better if you see for yourself. And much more beautiful."

At this, Katara sat up, apologies filling her cerulean eyes. "Oh. Um. I'd love to see it…please." As she got up from her furs and pulled a light shift over her undergarments-her bending outfit-she murmured, "I'm sorry I almost shoved an ice spear through your neck."

He couldn't help but give a short chuckle through his nose. Apologizing for nearly killing Fire Nation royalty? The way it was so inadequate seemed to fit the moment perfectly.

"Um," he said gruffly, then cleared his throat. "We should go, if we don't want to miss it." She followed him through the long corridors of the summer palace back to the room they had spent the afternoon rummaging through, her bare feet lightly slapping the cool obsidian floor tiles. The door still hung wide open from when Zuko had snapped the lock on the handle earlier.

"The sunrise shines directly into this room," he told her. He leaned against a crumbling wall near the worn door.

"But why are they called Sun Crystals?" she asked back, examining a faded map of the Fire Nation that hung crookedly by an armoire.

"For Agni's sake, be patient. You'll see in about a minute and a half." They were both silent, Katara abandoning the map and running her fingers over stray pieces of jewelry left about the room and Zuko watching her. The silence wasn't entirely uncomfortable-a little odd, maybe, but comfortable enough. Seconds ticked by and soon the sun started to peek above the horizon, stretching its rays into the room.

The crystal on the farthest end of the room reacted first, catching the light and throwing in on the opposite wall in dozens of broken rainbows. Katara watched in awe as more crystals sent out their own armies of rainbow beams as the sun crept higher. No longer tired, utter wonder consumed her as she looked at the rainbow-splattered ceiling and walls. She held her hand up to one of the beams, giggling when her fingers became heliotrope and incarnadine, coquelicot and peridot.

Minutes passed and too soon the rainbows faded. "That only happens when the sun is at a certain angle," he explained. "It's a great thing to wake up to, except no one's been here for years."

More silence descended on the pair of benders, but this time it was warm, friendly, acceptable. They stood where they were, gazing out different windows where, beyond the suspended crystals, climbed the sun.

"This was my mother's sitting room," Zuko suddenly said, gesturing in the general direction of lavish ottomans and low tables and plush sofas pushed against a far wall. "She loved this room because of the crystals."

"That's…wow," she managed, unsure of how to respond to that exactly. Katara looked around again. "I know how much your mother means to you and how big a part of your life she is. Thank you for sharing it with me, too."

Without putting much thought into it, she crossed the room and hooked her arms around his neck. Zuko seemed shocked at her audacity at first, but her words quickly echoed in his mind: _being a part of the group means being a part of group hugs._ So he hugged her back, and something-he wasn't sure what, but it was definitely something-changed drastically in those couple short seconds. When she pulled back and smiled at him, he nodded in acknowledgement and managed a tightlipped grin when she teased him about being so stoic: whatever the change was, he liked it.

_~Fin~_

* * *

**The sun crystals are actually called rainbow crystals, or rainbow prisms, or something along those lines, and they're really pretty when the sun catches them just right. I have one hanging from my window and from the rearview mirror in my mom's car. Because you all needed to know that.**

**I may have gotten a little too excited to use the new color words I just learned-heliotrope (purple), incarnadine (red), coquelicot (orange), and peridot (green). Haha. Forgive me for my insanity. :)**

**Review, please?**  
**Tchao, Zutarians.**  
**-Erika-**  
**xoxo**


End file.
